A continuing challenge in the semiconductor industry is to find new, innovative, and efficient ways of forming electrical connections with and between circuit devices which are fabricated on the same and on different wafers or dies. In addition, continuing challenges are posed to find and/or improve upon the packaging techniques utilized to package integrated circuitry devices.
One technique to alleviate these problems is optical interconnections between integrated circuits on the same die, adjacent die, or integrated circuits on a board. These interconnections can either be through air, optical waveguides or optical fibers. Since many integrated circuits include circuits formed from silicon based semiconductors, it would be desirable to use detectors also formed from silicon, e.g., a silicon photodiode or a metal-semiconductor-metal detector on silicon, etc. Such silicon based detectors have can only detect short wavelengths in the ultraviolet where silicon is strongly absorbing. Unfortunately, producing signals having such short wavelengths and accomplishing signaling implementations through appropriate waveguides to the detectors is more difficult to achieve.